It might not be improper, my lords, to publish to the people, by a formal proclamation, the benevolent intentions of their governours; and inform them, that licensed murderers are to be appointed, at whose shops they may infallibly be destroyed, without any danger of legal censures, provided they take care to use the poison prescribed by the government, and increase, by their death, the publick revenue.

That money only is desired from this bill, is not only obvious from the first perusal of it, but confessed even by those who defend it; but not one has continued to assert, that it will produce a reformation of manners, or recommended it otherwise than as an experiment.

For this reason, my lords, I still think my motion for postponing the bill very reasonable, nor do I make any scruple to confess that I propose, by postponing, only a more gentle and inoffensive method of dropping it, that some other way of raising the supplies may be attempted, or that the duty may be raised to three shillings a gallon; the lowest tax that can be laid with a design of reformation.

This method, my lords, or any other by which another bill may be procured, should be pursued; for whatever schemes the commons may substitute, the nation can suffer nothing by the change, they cannot raise money in any other manner, but with less injury to the publick; since the greatest calamity which wrong measures can possibly produce, is the propagation of wickedness, and the establishment of debauchery.

Lord BATH then spoke, in substance as follows:—­My lords, that this bill is, with great propriety, called an experiment, I am ready to allow, but do not think the justness of that expression any forcible argument against it; because I know not any law that can be proposed for the same end, without equally deserving the same appellation.

All the schemes of government, my lords, have been perfected by slow degrees, and the defects of every regulation supplied by the wisdom of successive generations.  No man has yet been found, whose discernment, however penetrating, has enabled him to discover all the consequences of a new law, nor to perceive all the fallacies that it includes, or all the inconveniencies that it may produce; the first essay of a new regulation is, therefore, only an experiment made, in some degree, at random, and to be rectified by subsequent observations; in making which, the most prudent conduct is only to take care that it may produce no ill consequences of great importance, before there may be an opportunity of reviewing it.

This maxim, my lords, is, in my opinion, strictly regarded in the present attempt, which in itself is an affair of very great perplexity.  The health and virtue of the people are to be regarded on one part, and the continuance of a very gainful and extensive manufacture on the other; a manufacture by which only, or chiefly, the produce of our own nation is employed; and on which, therefore, the value of lands must very much depend.